- data-center
- water
Water usage effectiveness measures a data center's cooling-water use against the energy delivered to its IT equipment, usually stated in liters per kilowatt-hour. It is the water peer of PUE: where PUE captures energy overhead, WUE captures how much water the cooling system uses to reject the resulting heat. The convention counts on-site consumption, but a reported WUE may instead be built on withdrawal — a distinct quantity — so the metric basis has to be recorded, not assumed.
WUE is the coefficient that turns a computing load into a cooling-water quantity, which is why it is central to the water thread. An evaporative, closed-loop cooling design posts a higher WUE — it spends water to save electricity — while an air-cooled or once-through cooling design posts a lower one. Multiplying a facility's IT energy by a WUE yields that water quantity on the metric's own basis; getting to the consumptive cooling draw the water-balance model tests against a reach's low flow takes a further, separately labeled withdrawal-to-consumption assumption when the WUE is a withdrawal figure. Because operators report WUE inconsistently, the platform carries it as a labeled scenario input, not a measured fact.